After two full days of virtual silence a number of accounts have surfaced of Monday’s Celtic Summit with the Collective.
Everyone of them paints a bleak picture, there wasn’t as much as a hint of an olive branch offered by Michael Nicholson and Chris McKay who headed up the representation from the club. Backed by the Head of Legal and SLO John Paul Taylor.
A number of fan media outlets seem angered and upset that reports have leaked out on social media and published. They’ve then gone on to give versions from their representatives at the meeting!
RGC PODCAST
With Remy McSwain on board the three man RGC podcast that outlet has quickly become essential listening. Back in the spring of 2024 McSwain on Kerrydale Street broke the news that Mark Lawwell was leaving Celtic. Apparently to take up fresh opportunities, none of which have yet been made public. Mark has since deleted his Linked in profile.
The Celtic Collective had seven fans at the meeting alongside representatives from eight other organisations.
It seems that the meeting wasn’t recorded but there was an agreement from both sides to publish Minutes.
Minutes are different from a transcription, they are a summary.
On Tuesday at 2pm the Collective provided an update which covered the undermining of Brendan Rodgers in The Sun.
Nicholson’s answer was typically unconvincing, he considers the issue closed. He is in a small minority with that view, it would be no surprise if that issue is holding up publication on the Minutes.
Discussing Monday’s meeting Thompson was at best underwhelmed by the attitude of Nicholson and McKay.
The meeting itself, very civil, very generally even tempered, I’d say. There wasn’t any raised voices at all, which was quite surprising, apart from a couple of guys had to raise their voices to speak over the noise that was coming from the air conditioning units in the bar at the Jock Stein Lounge, but I wouldn’t say it was convivial.
It was quite formal, it was quite definitely clear that there was a degree of discomfort, and probably from our side as well as theirs, because there’s obviously been a lot of emotion in there the last few weeks, but it was, I guess, without going into the massive amount of detail on it, it was just a real disappointment.
We looked at it from the perspective that we wanted to to take each question that was posed in the open letter, and effectively that served as the agenda, those seven questions which everybody’s seen and read, and that the board had decided not to respond to, but to be fair to them, they did have responses to each of the questions last night, if you could call them responses, but they were very laboured, very slow to address any actual action.
There was no real commitments, maybe one commitment towards the end which we could pick up on, and it was really a case of, yeah, we think we do everything okay, guys, what’s your problem exactly?
And it kind of was a recurring theme for the night was, you know, everything’s fine, and we’ve qualified for the group stages 19 times in the last 20 years, what are you worried about in Europe? You know, what’s the transfer policy?
One of my favourites, which will come in the minutes, I’m sure, but the question around the communication strategy was answered by, ‘we put a statement in the AGM every year, and we also had Paul Tisdale, he did a presentation for 40 minutes at the Fans Forum once’, so that’s the communication football strategy to the wider support, and it kind of went on like that.
It just felt like, I don’t want to get personal about it, because sometimes these processes need to be depersonalised, but the Chief Executive didn’t look like he was really particularly engaged or prepared for the meeting.
The Finance Director was definitely more engaged and definitely more articulate in terms of the answers we got, not particularly detailed, but definitely articulate, and I think the challenge for the guys around the table at our side, and it was a big round table, if you want to picture it, we were all sitting around the table together, but the challenge for us was actually got to the point we were trying to get them to understand that we were trying to help them, rather than being adversarial and confrontational in any way.
It was myself and one or two other guys going, ‘look, do you actually realise what you’re saying here? Do you realise the opportunity you’re missing here? Just give us something we can go back to people with and put their minds at rest that you’re actually in control of the situation’, and it was really difficult.
It was like drawing blood of a stone, it was just constant references back to fans forums, the information that’s been provided before, stuff that we’re thinking of, stuff that we’re looking at, stuff that we could maybe communicate a bit better, if only we had a communications infrastructure we could use to do it guys, you know, it was that kind of thing, it was really, it was not becoming of conversations.
Someone inside Celtic decided that it would be better to meet the Collective rather than just take up the usual position of silence.
Meetings would have been held ahead of the meeting to decide on policy.
Concessions on fan engagement and communications mean nothing when every issue from the Collective was dismissed.
According to Nicholson and McKay Celtic are a well run club, admitted across Europe!
EUROPEAN TAX ISSUES?
One account of the meeting had Nicholson highlighting European tax issues as a barrier to completing transfers. Surely a £10,000 a week Chief Financial Officer can crack through those issues.
With so many accounts of the meeting now available there is real pressure on Celtic to approve the minutes. They are factual, not open to interpretation.
It is understandable that the club’s Legal Team are reluctant to see the comments of Nicholson and McKay go public.
If nothing surfaces on Thursday it leaves the Collective with a big decision to make. Communications and fan engagement are areas that the club clearly isn’t world class.
Over 400 different fan groups have backed the Collective. The credibility of the Collective is at stake if the Minutes remain a secret going into the weekend.
“Overall, the Club believes the football strategy is working and pointed to participation in European competition as evidence of its success.”
These feckers think that’s success and their excuse in the transfer market is 🤬laughable
— Joe Miller (@joe_averagejoe) October 7, 2025
